School District No. 46 (SD46) is eligible to receive an additional $380,465 for student transportation this school year, as long as the district gets its application in by Sept. 30.
During the Sept. 14 school board meeting, secretary treasurer Nicholas Weswick reported that the Ministry of Education would be allocating an extra $14.7 million across B.C. to improve student transportation, and districts were invited to apply for a portion of the funds.
A formula tied to student location decides how much each school district is eligible for and Weswick said SD46 could expect to receive $380,465.
He said the money could be used for things like maintaining 2015-16 service levels and routes, covering busing costs for field trips or purchasing new “activity buses” to replace the district’s aging fleet of 15 passenger vans.
“We need to make an application to be able to qualify for the funding and then our actual spending, what we do with the funding once it’s received, will be decided through our amended budget process,” Weswick said.
“We’ll make an application, it’s due by Sept. 30 unfortunately, so not a lot of time for in depth review, but obviously it can be amended after the fact as part of our budget.”
School board chair Betty Baxter said any additional funding from the ministry would likely be added to the district’s budget in February of next year
“Depending on how much we get, what the pressures are, there could be a transportation amendment based on that grant this year and that’s the intent,” Baxter said.
“We believe this will be an ongoing enhancement to transportation, that it’s not just a one-time [funding announcement] so then we can look at where there are places we can enhance the service.”
The Ministry of Education has said that the additional transportation funds must be used to decrease or eliminate student transportation fees charged in school districts before any funds can be used for other purposes – however, SD46 doesn’t charge for busing so it’s free to invest in improvements.
This year’s school bus service started off a bit rocky on the first day back in school, with some students unsure where and when pickups occurred, but Randy Gould with Thirdwave Bus Services said everything was running smoothly by the end of the week.
He sees no need to increase school bus service on the Coast with the funds from the ministry because at this time “things are going well.”
